Quote from: Brad;796905I play games, I don't explore human sexuality via "role playing".

There is a joke in there somewhere.

Quote from: CRKrueger;796940Imagine a Northman...

Guess what?

The fact that the first thing into your mind wasn't an Inuit doesn't make you a bigot.

Northman : "one of the ancient Scandinavians, especially a member of the group that from about the 8th to the 11th century made many raids and established settlements in Great Britain, Ireland, many parts of continental Europe, and probably in parts of North America." (dictionary.reference.com).

If you said "think of someone who lives north of latitude X north" and only ever got stereotypical Vikings after asking the same person many, many times in a context that values creative answers, then, yes, bigot.  Yes, maybe unimaginative, uncreative and ignorant; feel free to claim those instead.

Quote from: TristramEvans;796945I pictured a guy in spandex and a cape with a working compass on his chest and a weathervane on his head. So, not sure what that makes me.

I pictured a guy in spandex and a cape with a workingclass compass on his chest and a weathervane on his head. So, not sure what that makes me.

Northman! Hero of the north! Champion of the working classes. Trainer of whippets. Botherer of ferrets.

Proves I'm a southern ponce. With dated vocabulary.

I would also take:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wLQNrr15sA

Quote from: rawma;796951ignorant

There you go, that was overdue.

Quote from: Bren;796854You should have stopped at not discussing your mindset. Its not possible to misunderstand what you wrote, because what you wrote is incoherent to the point that any proper understanding of it is impossible.

There are people who would have understood at once, what the point was, because they have certain unmetionened and unoticed corrolaries in their mind. But for others its incomprehensible gibberish, cause they have different corrolaries, so one would have to identify these differences and spell them out to avoid communication failure due to these differences.

Or shorter, if two people are on differing sides of several aisles, much what they hear from the other will sound like utter bullshit.

Examples:

Quote from: BenTheFerg;796868The realities of our sexist world find women only owning 1% of the world's wealth  - source Wall Street Journal  -quoting the UN http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/09/18/new-facts-on-the-gender-gap-from-the-world-bank/ in 2011.

All being equal, 52% population = women, thus they should own 52% wealth and have 52% of positions of power.

Bullshit!

Quote from: Will;796865I've sometimes considered running a fantasy game where elves pretty much had 21st century western etiquette, beliefs, and attitudes.
And the humans had medieval etiquete, beliefs, and attitudes.

'My Lord Iscliath, ... the messenger has returned from the human kingdom.'
"And?"
'We are awaiting the healers.'
"... Wait, what?"
'She was raped repeatedly and there's not much left of her face. We're trying regeneration potions.'
"What the fucking fuck? Ok, screw this, mount up the siege treants."

Bullshit!

Quote from: RPGPundit;796815If you are setting it on a world that isn't Earth, that doesn't have christian monotheism as its dominant religion, that does have fireball (to say nothing of Change Self) style working magic, and monsters of all variety, then all bets are off. I wouldn't specifically have a problem with a world like that where, for particular and explicitly-understandable reasons, some or all areas persecuted homosexuality, but I also wouldn't have any problem at all with a world like that where you had a homosexual couple with adopted kids as owners of the local tavern.

And of course, if you've got a world that's like Classical Greece, or ancient India, or the pre-columbian Maya, then its just silly to be talking about the U.S. 21st century heterosexual-homosexual male-female divides at all.

Partial bullshit!

All 3 suffer to some extent from irrational prejudice and lack of ability to get out of their own skin. At least from my POV. Probably, their positions are well-reasoned and rational from their own POV. But it would take to many words to understand what is exactly bullshit and what is only perceived bullshit (=bullshit happening in my brain).

Um, it's bullshit that I once wanted to run a game like that?

Quote from: stupidquestion;796958(=bullshit happening in my brain).

About sums it up.

Quote from: TristramEvans;796960About sums it up.

You're on a roll today.

Quote from: Will;796959Um, it's bullshit that I once wanted to run a game like that?

That you think that game would have much to do with 21-first century or medieval etiquette is bullshit.

For example, some years ago a US ambassador - the equivalent of a messenger - was treated worse than the one in your fictional example and some longer time ago embassy staff was kidnapped and murdered by people still regurlarly burning the US flag to chants "Death to the great satan." and no orders equivalent to "mount up the siege treants" were issued.

On the other hand, people in many time periods were well aware that the treatment of messengers would be understood as direct response to the message, therefore they would be unlikely to mistreat a messenger due to their own sexual desires, but normally mistreatment would be a deliberate response to the message, e.g.:
http://books.google.de/books?id=UoOZwk_4SWEC&pg=PA53&lpg=PA53&dq=spartans+messengers+well&source=bl&ots=l4lIhqK7QN&sig=sB36UdbkcQrHTBcQnWc4eFp6wHA&hl=de&sa=X&ei=dX1cVNTqJc3CPIGigbgJ&ved=0CFYQ6AEwBzgK#v=onepage&q=spartans%20messengers%20well&f=false
p. 53, first paragraph

And there is no reason to assume medieval would not know or not care about the status of messengers. But as long as you have fun with wrong notions about today people and medieval people, its of course irrelevant that its bullshit, funny bullshit is still funny.

Quote from: BenTheFerg;796887And even if this is the case,  who cares,  other than bigots like you. There you go.  Insult me and I will eventually stoop to your level.  Congratulations.

You care, hence your rant in the previous post.

Quote from: Will;796811'Our pseudo-medieval game in which there are almost no plagues or factors present in actual medieval times, with elves and orcs and magic and gods and zombies, doesn't have any gay or lesbian or trans folks in it at all because that would be, um, unhistoric/contrary to the fantasy we've decided counts (even if that fantasy has no resemblance to D&D at all)'

Explain to me how 'nothing but traditional (heterosexual) relationships exist' is not erasure.

Heh.  Reminds me of a thread in the same vein over on TBP a few years back, where one poster claimed that there couldn't be any gay characters in a popular D&D setting because "the gods all agreed that no one was homosexual."

My retort was somewhere along the lines of "Say what?  You're telling me that in a setting where the gods agree on nothing -- not who's in charge, not on any other issue of morality, not on who gets to be priests, not on trappings or vestments or spells or temple architecture or anything else, this is what you claim the sole common ground of the gods is?  Bullshit."

Quote from: Ulairi;796829Not including gay folks into your game isn't erasure. A lot of us run games and sexuality never comes into anything. Does my game world have gay folks? I'm sure they are there.

See, I have to keep calling bullshit on the "sexuality never comes into anything."  In your gaming circle, there are never any husbands or wives?  There's not a single family?  Not a single NPC is depicted as anything other than asexual?  Brothels don't exist?  Exotic dancers or scantily-clad slave girls don't exist?  There's never any plot involving the king's son, or the baron's daughter, or the missing baby?

If you can look me in the eye and honestly say, "No.  There never has been," then okay.  That'd be a damn weird setting, but okay.

If you can't, then dude, you have sexuality in your setting. And that takes away the only legitimate excuse any of the antis- have proffered: that since there is no sexuality in their games there's no point to include LGBT NPCs.

Well, okay: "I'm a bigot and if I put faggot NPCs in my campaign my buddies will think I've gone queer or ... (gasp) liberal!" is an honest excuse.

Quote from: S'mon;796846I remember reading through City State of the Invincible Overlord and finding not one married couple in all the hundreds of NPCs. It's implied that the two owners of Naughty Nannies might be romantic as well as business partners; that's it.

Nah, you've got Udol on pg. 11, Asielomar on p. 12, Ar-naney, Rheu and Buga on p. 17. (I stopped counting at page 20.)  Of course, the names of the wives aren't mentioned except for Buga's wife Gwartina, which rather fits Judges Guild style: as of p. 20, there were 149 shops run by male characters and only five run by women, three of those being brothels.

If we wanted to be inclusive, we would have a weighted chart that defined your sexuality, just like your species, gender, stats, et al. (Something like you see in Harnmaster.) The fact that you generally don't roll it randomly, nor does it have much weight in most (if any) systems, nor bears any advantage or consequence in the system (or for the most part, settings) means that our hobby has ignored this issue from the very beginning. The hard truth is - this stuff DOES make a lot of us uncomfortable. Some of us had to seek out "those not like us" and have real conversations before our heads were plucked screaming from our asses. Some of us don't want the experience.

This is not a debate about bigots and social-justice-warriors. It's a fundamental lack of respect, understanding and unwillingness to recognize an individual's liberties.

If someone is uncomfortable with sex, or gender issues, or LBGT subjects, or including topics as such in their games, why is it not acceptable they don't want to deal with it? I mean, are we going to force them? Should those who have religious convictions or moral convictions or personal convictions that gay sex and marriage are wrong be forced to play gay NPCs or run LBGT-themed adventures?

Some people are tired of the sexy, boob-popping, man-bulging unclothed art still prevalent in our hobby. Should we force them to buy products with art they don't want? Should we air-drop sexy hentai, rape-a-thon, titillating graphic adventures into their backyards?

If some gamer wants sexy-times art and subjects they should be able to find products that appeal to their tastes. If another gamer wants inclusiveness and non-hetero-normative cultures or subjects they should be able to find products that appeal to their tastes. If yet another gamer would like all you freaks to get the fuck off their lawn so they can fight monsters and win the day in a manner that does not require these lofty or lecherous subjects, then they too should be able to find the products that appeal to their tastes.

What fascinates me in all these debates is how directly HORRIBLE we all are to each other over our fucking game of choice! It's incredible. Instead of a bunch of gamer nerds gaming, creating and enjoying our shit together we find a difference and then skewer and vilify until our eyes are bleeding from the onslaught.

Here's the devastating truth. YOU ARE ALL RIGHT. All of you. Every single fucking one from the "stupid" conservative dude who can't type fluent English to the most Liberal champion. All of you.

If I say "I think that naked girl picture on the cover is gorgeous, artistic and eye-catching and more importantly inspires my inner pervert" does NOT mean I'm a woman-hating misogynist bent on revoking woman's rights.

If I say "I really like this transgendered hero on the front cover, it's artistic and relevant and inspires my inner adventurer" does NOT mean I'm a god-hating, child molester who wants to destroy Christmas and ban churches from the country.

It's not all black and white. It feels like these arguments are going to destroy the very fabric of what creative nerdy gamers are. First and foremost WE PLAY GAMES! Maybe we can't all play the same games, that's fine. Maybe we all shouldn't buy every product out there, that's fine. But for the love of the gods, why in the FUCK are we shitting on each other for what boils down to personal liberties?!?! You don't have to agree with me or like what I like but for FUCKS SAKE don't virtually sodomize me for what I DO or DO NOT like!!!

If you hurt someone, or exclude someone, or ruin someone, or slander someone, or purposefully hinder them because of their race, religion, gender, sexuality, political leanings, personal values or pretty much any such category - THEN you are an evil person. But creating games, creating art, making adventures, publishing, extolling, or playing games that you personally WANT to - is NOT evil. Creation is not evil. Playing is not evil.

We should be comfortable enough with what we want and understanding enough of what others want that we can carry on a conversation about our differences without it devolving into a shit-throwing fest.

Just my two cents...

I couldn't give a rats ass what anyone plays or wants to buy, but if a dude is going to freak out about a transgender character in an adventure, that he bought without apparently reading anything much about it, then the only way he is going to have never bought a single thing that included them is for them to literally not exist.

"I am offended that I bought this thing that I had read almost nothing about before buying, and it had something I disapprove of!"

The only way that could never happen is if no one ever, ever, included anything he could disapprove of. So this idea of different strokes for different folks, whatever man. Sure, but don't go on the internet and act like Paizo did something wrong by writing it.

And hey, I mean, its not like its literally impossible to rewrite if you don't want that part in your game for some reason. Change one or the other of the characters into a dude, make the sold sword to pay for the treatment for some kind of painful magical nonfatal curse, boom. done, that literally took me the amount of time it took to type this sentence. No reason to bitch about it on the internet.

Oh, unless you just find transgender people icky. I guess that is a reason.